Third Round

In its long fight to divorce moviemaking from exhibiting, the Justice Department won the third round of its bout with Hollywood's Big Five (TIME, May 17, 1948, et seq.) Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc., following the lead of Paramount and RKO, last week agreed to split into two new companies. One will produce and distribute films, the other will show them. Under the consent decree, the three Warner brothers, Harry, Albert and Jack, and other members of the family will be permitted to hold stock in only one of the companies. To increase competition in certain cities, Warner also agreed that the new theater company would sell from 54 to 81 of the houses in its chain of 436 theaters. The agreement left 20th Century-Fox and Loew's M-G-M still to be split up by the trustbusters.

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